With cries of “Hallelujah,” and one flag-waving woman declaring Monday “Dundalk?s Independence Day,” Baltimore County residents and officials cheered as two blighted apartment buildings became piles of shattered glass and bricks.
The start of the county-funded razing of the crime-ridden Yorkway apartment complex began a “new chapter” in Dundalk?s revitalization, said County Executive Jim Smith and Councilman John Olszewski, D-District 7, who sat behind an excavator to take a “ceremonial first swipe” at the first of a total 56 buildings slated for demolition.
“I just can?t wait to see kids running around and ice cream trucks coming down this street again,” Olszewski said.
The county has purchased 80 percent of the individually owned buildings so far, officials said. The $17.2 million project ? $6 million overbudget ? is just one element to the county?s $90 million investment in the Dundalk renaissance under Smith.
Police responded to 3,800 calls for help in the neighborhood in 2005, Smith said. The county set up a relocationcenter on Yorkway Road that assisted 105 families, he said.
Many residents such as Vernon Williams and Carol Tyndall were displaced after the county redeveloped two blighted complexes in Essex and apartments above the Dundalk Village Shopping Center. The couple said the county gave them 30 days to move out of their Dundalk Village unit last year and now have to look for another new home.
But with Tyndall pregnant, even they say the move could be a blessing in disguise.
“In a way, I?ll be glad to get out of here,” Tyndall said. “The drugs are outrageous.”
Catherine Kates said she moved into her home just outside the Yorkway complex in 1994, and two months later had an outdoor barbecue for her granddaughter?s sixth birthday.
It was the last outdoor get-together she ever had, she said.
“When you actually have the drug dealers leaning on your fence, when they are lining up near your garage waiting to buy drugs … I felt like a prisoner,” Kates said. “This is Dundalk?s Independence Day.”
